Montgomery Considers Transgender Protections

Montgomery County Council member Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) yesterday introduced legislation intended to protect members of the transgender community from discrimination. If approved by the council, Trachtenberg said Montgomery would join more than 100 other jurisdictions, including the District and Baltimore, in prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity in areas such as employment and housing.

"This is not radical legislation. It's very much a part of what I'd call moral legislation," Trachtenberg said before the council's meeting. "It is my belief that they deserve to live and work with equality."

The measure was inspired in part by Trachtenberg's friendship with her council aide Dana Beyer, who is transgender.

Beyer, a retired eye surgeon, ran unsuccessfully last fall for a Montgomery County seat in the House of Delegates.
Beyer said yesterday the legislation would "send a message to the community. When you see you are protected, that changes your perception of what you can accomplish."

Gee, it seems that the Left has gotten over their alleged aversion to legislating morality, particularly when it is onto others who dare hold different morals. Seriously though, they've been doing exactly that (although what they embrace is more correctly called amorality) for decades, it's just surprising to see one of them actually be honest about it.

Or be honest about anything, really.

Montgomery County must have solved all of their other pressing issues if something such as this now has priority.

Rufus, if it's part of your "morality" to fire or evict someone based on their gender identity or sexual orientation rather than their behavior as an employee/tenant, then I hope we legislate your "morality" back into the 19th century.

Doesn't the law there already bar discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation? If so, it doesn't matter if a transgendered person is pre-op or post-op, they are already covered under existing law. I am assuming this law would therefore only apply to the small portion of the transgendered community that is hemaphrodite - and if that's the case, I'm wondering where in the conversation of employment or housing that question arises?

Are you serious? ALL the time I see employers say, "Look, if you're a gay man, we're fine with that. If you're a woman who used to be a man, we're cool. If you're a woman who used to be a man who now likes women (Mr. Garrison) then the job is your's. BUT, if you've got ovaries to go with your penis and a bad case of man-boobs because of your horomone treatments, sorry, you're out of luck."

Hey Cosmic Avenger, explain to me why someone's "gender identity or sexual" preference should be used to protect them from being removed for poor "behavior as an employee/tenant," because that's the way the game gets played in real life, as we all know.